This Apocalyptic Emergency Alert That Aired in California Will Terrify You

Just a cheery little mystery to take you into your weekend, during which the world will definitely not end.

Ever since the solar eclipse a few weeks ago, things have been weird. Now granted, you could argue that they've been weird far longer than that—like, say, dating back to a certain reality TV personality deciding to run for President, but lately things have seemingly taken a turn for the stranger and more ominous. There have been multiple record-breaking hurricanes, terrible earthquakes, and the rising threat of nuclear war. It's fair to say that people are on edge. So with that context in mind, imagine how terrified the people of Orange County, California were yesterday when they were minding their own business, watching TV, and suddenly this emergency alert interrupted their programming.

And that wasn't the only emergency alert that came across people's screens. Another one, with harder to make out audio featured the voice of a man saying, "Realize this, extremely violent times will come."

So the obvious question... What the hell?

Well, we don't know! The audio from the two alerts has been identified as an old phone call from Art Bell's conspiracy radio show and a Christian radio program, respectively. But how did this happen? According to the Orange County Register, a spokesperson for Cox cable said this was just a mistake where an emergency alert picked up radio broadcasts:

“With these tests, an emergency tone is sent out to initiate the
test,” Camero said. “After the tone is transmitted, another tone is
sent to end the message. It appears that the radio station (or
stations) did not transmit the end tone to complete the test.”

But that seems pretty odd, considering that multiple people received different apocalyptic-sounding alerts. If it were just a radio mistake, wouldn't some of that bled audio have been... say, sports talk, or local news? Some believe that it may have been the work of a hacker, or even related to a local pastor's claims that the world will end tomorrow on September 23rd. Regardless, it's a terrifying thing to hear on your TV. Anyway, have a good weekend! Hope we're all still here Monday!